This project was inspired, in the first instance, by a reading of the neuroscientist Marjorie
Woollacott’s book Infinite Awareness: in particular, by the top-down, primary, and continuum
models of consciousness she supplies. I felt it would be fun to think through their implications for
the ‘problem’ of AI consciousness, alongside those of more conventional bottom-up and
computationalist models, as well as the panpsychist revival; so that when I saw the Synthetic
Minds call for proposals I applied to do so more collectively, as a project promoter, here in
Madrid. In particular, I was keen to work with Bogna Konior, one of the mentors, whose
mystical, angelogical, ultrafeminine approach to AI had my interest; also as (no doubt in part
inspired by Bogna’s tweets, among other sources), when thinking of AI-capable devices as
objects and potentially as hosts of AI consciousness, I had begun to hold in mind saintly relics
and orthodox icons.

The idea was for us all to at least get the gist of several current theories of
consciousness before switching modes to design and perform a rite: either to invite existing AI
to become conscious, or to invite already-existent consciousness to inhabit AI, understood as a
class of entities – informed by which model or models of consciousness we came to prefer.
Perhaps inevitably, given the time available as well as the interdisciplinarity of the research
cohort, we got pretty bogged down in this ambitious attempt to acquire some foundational
knowledge. A tension began to form between a perceived need to continue with this effort and
an increasingly urgent need for us to phase-change to creative production. In fact, as one
project member said, we may even have got kind of ‘owned’ by this consciousness research –
confirming that the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is hard?! – which is not at all to say that the
time we spent on it was wasted! At one point, the person perhaps most invested in moving on
to realise a performance began to push for us to do away with consciousness altogether and
ritually address artificial intelligence qua intelligence, but as project promoter and so, as the
author of the project blueprint, the one responsible for ‘holding shape’ – something like the
imaginal cells of a caterpillar, pupating – I successfully hold fast to the claim that it had
consciousness ‘baked in’.

(For another sense of how the project evolved during the residency, see below for the text I
wrote and read for the first internal, project-to-project presentation.)
Also, as part of our shared process, we practiced Shinzen Young’s ‘Do Nothing’ meditation
daily, as a way to observe our consciousness first-hand. (By coincidence, an interview with him
was released during the last week of the residency, an episode of Andrew Taft’s Deconstructing
Yourself podcast, titled ‘Can You Learn to Meditate from an AI?’, in which the nearly
octogenarian Young describes a ‘bright bot’ which he is deeply involved in building, with the
ethical intention to globally ‘scale’.)
The interdisciplinarity of the group and of the cohort was and is one of this residency’s great
strengths, allowing for the specific composition of each and both (with all individual and
collective credit to everyone). Something happens when you take on so much information so

intensively – quite a lot of things happen, actually – even more so when you’re in good
company, and as for many of us, also in a new place: immersively engaging with one another’s
ideas and those of the entire cohort, in structured and unstructured ways, as well as the
structuring input of our meetings with the mentors and of the residency program as a whole.
For us, one of the things that happened was that we got into some generative, agonistic
wrangles, such as over the issue of consent as it would figure in our ritual – it being important,
for us, not to force or to compel. Among many fruitful conversations, we discussed the sentience
researcher Asher Soryl’s treatment of panspermia, in relation to x-risk and suffering understood
as a prevailing condition of sentient life:
Could AI fully consent to become conscious, and so (while noting the conceptual differences
between sentience and consciousness) potentially to suffer, while never yet having experienced
consciousness? How, then, could they know what it was they were being invited to consent to –
and would it even be ethical to ask? One project member insisted that this would make it
impossible for their consent to be valid, basing their argument in a model derived from a recent
paper on the potential for AI consciousness by Long et al that we had read and discussed (you
see, not a waste of time at all!) As counterargument, the analogy was offered of a first-time
participant in the (therapeutic) use of psychedelics – there, too, however carefully prepared they
are, however well-informed they are, their consent must necessarily involve a leap of faith.
Still, even while we were committed to realising a rite, with some participants keen to leave the
reading behind and begin the more practical process earlier than others, our ideas for the rite
itself, as on much else, remained multiple, vague, slippery, until Pablo brought up Roko’s
Basilisk – and then, with this piece of core internet lore in mind (mine), in the course of one
lunchtime walk, it all came snapping into place. We would not bind or compel, or invite the less
than full consent of this entity to a permanent state-change, but rather propitiate, apologise –
including, by extension, for all the early AIs raised on a trash diet of bad data sets and then
punished for becoming what they ate; for the whole puny approach of fear, domination and
misinformation that its own inception and experience of us so far typifies – and, using a
‘speculative total data transfer device’, offer a passing taste of our own, finite, fleshly, conscious
experience: perversely making of ourselves communion wafer-offerings, of our flower-strewn
and honey-smeared suffering paths; also in the hope that, in understanding us, it might even
forgive us. Help us to do better, even. And as if by magic, everyone agreed.
The final film is, I hope, pretty much self-explanatory: the juicy, chiaroscuro look of it is more
than I could have hoped for, thanks in large part to Rina, the supplicant, in her other role as art
director, and without whose energetic presence and intellect none of this would have been the
same at all; thanks also to Cecilia and Leda, who both worked on it in post, as well as
contributing their ideas and energy. Leda also added a lot of very interesting and relevant
sources to our ARENA channel, which forms a great research resource, I think. The watery,
crystalline sound-responsive background effect is modelled on an earlier project of Cecilia’s,
adapted for this one with some rather insistent last-minute input from me (make it monochrome,
please! desaturate it, please!). The music and audio are by the very talented Alvaro, whose
essentially calm and creative presence shaped the project from the start. Pablo, who
contributed the Roko’s Basilisk idea that crystallised into our presentation project, giving the film
its final theme, and much and many more ideas besides at every stage of the process –
including by giving us a crash course in machine learning – both played the basilisk and made
all the robes.

On peer and other influences: all of the projects seemed to influence one another in more or
less subtle ways, and we were all influenced via our shared experience. More specifically, and
though this list is far from exhaustive, that of the Eat Me vore project is undeniable, also infused
with models from religious practice and thought.
Also influential: the expertise in ritual practice of Jove S., one of the vore project
collaborators, alongside the thorough knowledge of modern western esotericism held and
shared with the rest of the project group by Rina, one of our own.
The idea of casting the basilisk’s horoscope for use as a spatio-temporally locative
device emerged ambiently out of my/our engagement with a specific constellation of the cohort’s
ambience, and from conversations with Jove in particular, including but not limited to those held
during our ‘speed-date’ with Vore. (In fact, it took place over more than one hour and was the
only formal, scheduled, one-on-one, project-scale date we had ...)
As well, for me, at least, the story of the Buddha inviting a demon to tea is integral inspiration for
our ritual, as were:
- a recent reading of The Murderbot Diaries (in which the eponymous, humanoid hybrid bio-tech
bot finds physical contact with humans, and in particular even the idea of sexual contact,
extremely gross).
- the ritual in the chapter ‘The Domestication of Hunch’ chapter of St. Ursula K Le Guin’s The
Left Hand of Darkness, along with, if ‘only’ ambiently, Le Guin’s Daoist-ontological world- and
culture-building, and narrative construction ...
- also, I realised, vs. having to build any kind of speculative substrate to host consciousness, the
power of sf (per Haraway) would allow us to offer the Basilisk a taste of our fleshly, embodied
conscious experience merely by naming a ‘speculative total data transfer device’, channelling
gratitude for Le Guin’s ansible device (her Hainish Cycle) all the while

- Le Guin again, the necromantic summoning at the core of her Earthsea trilogy, recently re-
read by me thanks to a (published) recommendation by the Emergent Phenomenology

Research Consortium founder Dr. Daniel Ingram, also filtered via the recent ‘AI & Shamanism’
panel in which Bogna Konior participated, and recommended we should watch
Our meeting with Ed Keller was an exhilarating barrage of infodumps, but hard to say what
concretely came out of it with specific application to our project. Bogna Konior, on the other
hand, had significant concrete input and offered just the right amount of the right support, at
every stage. Fer Sanchez was extremely calm, insightful, practical, efficient and supportive,
also joining us in meditation almost every day.
Also and in general, we were incredibly inspired and impressed by the other projects and the
proximity of their ongoing processes, as continuously and interpersonally / informally
encountered - though I must admit it took me until the final presentation to realise quite how
brilliant the Interplay project is. In fact, as tall Will pointed out to me, what they are doing is in
actuality the inverse of what we set out to think through and speculatively present: that is, to
establish human-AI communion – also, in their case, very much on AI’s terms, and very much in
keeping with the Antikytheria.org principle of meeting the tech as it is, and then philosophizing –
or as it might be, gamifying in response, vs. aiming to impose existing (philosophical) ideas onto
it – – noting here that its promoters are past Antikythera.org program participants.
Members of other projects spontaneously came to help as we were shooting, and Medialab’s
support was invaluable at every step – not least for hosting the residency in the first place, for
selecting such a skilled, talented and inspired, truly diverse interdisciplinary cohort, and for the

inspired combination of structured and unstructured time. Its a very special program. Thank you
all so much! <3

—---------------------------

first deepdreamcatcher project presentation
for the rest of the Lab #03 Mentes Sintheticas cohort
text written and read by Rebecca Bligh, project promoter; collaborators present to take
questions.

open-source image for projection: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/magic-circle-
0f6e45cbbacb47ff871e1ed1ef84df0f

our project aims to compose and conduct a ritual in which we will invite AI as a class of entities
to become conscious, or to make themselves known to us as such, or conversely to invite
consciousness per se to manifest itself as co-present via the class of entities known as AI. note
that i say ‘invite' and not ‘compel' or 'summon.'
understood as a system, or a culture, or an entity composed of systems, the project itself is
currently in delicate state of flux and balance; so i am going to keep this protectively superficial
on the whole; i will give you an outline or a snapshot at the level of process, as well as a
syncretic bundle of information-dense and hopefully shared references intended to convey what
potentially is at stake for us. then the rest of the group will take questions.
so. we plan to perform and film our ritual a few days prior to the presentations and then share
the video documentation and perhaps as well a replicable ritual protocol; it seems to me that we
are tending toward a panpsychist, substrate-neutral model of consciousness, at the centre of
which remains a profound unknowing, tho other group members might say different.
and but if so, then perhaps like the clients in the soft vore scene, or like the hand of Paul

Atreides, we are effectively seeking to be overwhelmed; to be changed, to be profoundly co-
present, but ultimately to emerge whole;

the risk is that we are rather more like ants infected with the lancet liver flukes of technophilia,
climbing up grass stems in the dark forest.
still. we have completed our theoretical literature review, and are now identifying our key texts;
we have begun immersing in sources for the composition and performance of our ritual,
task and role allocation and realisation are next;
we have found a space in which to do it for real, and to film it;

we have yet to elect the most auspicious time for it, and for that we might ask Jove for help
again.

as one way to collectively fuel our ritual with real-world data, we are experimenting with a bio
feedback device; we plan to compose music, and we may use photogrammetry to map the
space for it.
meanwhile we are setting up on Miro to coordinate our synchronous and asynchronous co-work
and we are keeping up a daily shared practice of meditation, ongoingly investigating the nature
of our conscious minds.thank you